


Enlistment

by Scedasticity



Series: 0k [4]
Category: Homestuck
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-23
Updated: 2017-09-23
Packaged: 2019-01-04 08:15:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,288
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12165009
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Scedasticity/pseuds/Scedasticity
Summary: Enlistment in the Terrifying Ghost Army, over the sweeps.





	Enlistment

==> BE FUTURE ARADIA

It's the fucking Gleeful Abandon that gets you. 

The terrible killjoy captain (not to be confused with the killjoy commodore) has finally decided that the level of haunting is interfering with operational efficiency, and contacted the Bureau of Retermination to at least get the officers' diningblock cleared out. All the administrative material was in order, you checked in, bowed and scraped, you did everything you were supposed to, and some junior subjugglator walks in, decides he doesn't WANT the ghosts cleared out, and casually crushes your throat and snaps your neck. 

Feferi's given him a massive brain hemorrhage before you're even clear of your body. You give her a mildly reproving look. "I WAS going to haunt him a bit myself."

"Sorry?" She sounds a little sorry. "You could still terrorize his ghost."

"It's not the same." It's the work of a moment to fix your neck, followed by dozens of aches and pains which have built up over the sweeps. "Okay. I am professionally obligated to completely trash at least half the ship now, but I want to go talk to Sollux before he hears it from the official report." Oh, fuck, he probably HEARD you, too. "You mind getting started?"

She cracks her knuckles. "Not at all."

Sollux is upset, of course, and threatens not to help you learn to type with your brain, and gets sniffly, but you both knew this was coming sooner rather than later, and it's not like you're GONE. He agrees to message the living individually. You head off to look for Karkat, Gamzee, and Vriska -- they deserve to hear it from you before you send out an all-points bulletin to the Terrifying Ghost Army re: avenging your slightly premature demise. 

Skeleton -- back in the Fleet this sweep while a ghost necropath called Latecome watches the Caverns -- finds you while you're working out how to jump to Karkat's location. "Megido." She's never really picked up calling you by your adult name. 

"Hi," you reply absently. Where is he... oh right, Gathering Swarm. 

"Welcome to the club. I can see you're busy right now, but... We need to talk when you have time. There's some stuff I haven't told you."

By the time you escape the -- admittedly very informative -- conversation, the rest of the terrifying ghost army has trashed at least two-thirds of the Gleeful Abandon. You just go ahead and trash the rest. 

~~~~

==> BE FUTURE SOLLUX

Between hacking and your information network, you find out about the agreement to sell you out of the squadron almost as soon as it happens. The prospective buyer is higher-ranked, more conquest-focused. Fleet data indicates that he likes well-trained, integrated helmsmen. That MIGHT have been manageable, but the out of the squadron part isn't. 

You announce in the dropbox that you think it's time. KK throws a fit, but the out of the squadron part convinces him, too. 

You let Kanaya and disorderlyImpulse know transmissions on this end may be delayed for a while until you get used to ghost computing, and to hold off on routing anything to twinArmageddons until you inform them everything's transferred. It helps that disorderlyImpulse already knows about the ghost thing. 

Your closest friends are in the dropbox. Outside that... You consider leaving messages for Ananas, Cephal, maybe Pachex and the least odious of your techs. (Why do you have FRIENDS?) You decide against it. You'll stop by in person later. 

You DO leave time-delayed taunts for the captain and the more odious techs. 

You initially plan on taking care of it yourself -- there are features specifically designed to keep helmsmen from offing themselves, but you sneer at their pathetic hardware constraints. But that COULD get someone else in trouble, and it might be someone you don't want to get in trouble, so you agree to let a ghost do it. 

Ghosts, as it turns out. AA drags you out of your body, and FF quickly and efficiently shuts down all your body's functions so no one can use it as a mindless battery. 

You blast the memory of biowire off your hands and feet, and avoid looking right at the body. "As long as you're at it, mind killing the helmscolumn?" You'd do it, but if you're anything like everyone else it'll be a while before you can affect the real world. 

"Dibs," KK says, and manifests a sickle. 

AA hugs you. You hug back.

~~~~

==> BE FUTURE TAVROS

Most of your colleagues from your Conscription days are gone. Even beyond the preferential treatment you get, you have a much smaller problem with some of the significant areas of chronic stress in lowbloods -- if your knees don't like the weight of your horns, you can fix them yourself with a wrench, and you added a back brace pretty early on. 

But then you get sick. Really sick, and in the back of your mind where you're not too fevered to think you're pretty sure they're not going to spare the medicine for you. Lowbloods -- especially lowbloods your age -- don't get antibiotics. But you've built up a lot of goodwill, so you get Terezi informed before and not after, in time to visit, and you get an anesthetic overdose to make everything easy. 

You coalesce in the Mediculler bay to find Terezi must have passed the information on -- Aradia and Gamzee are perched on the counter and Vriska is pacing back and forth behind them. 

"Tav-bro!" Gamzee says enthusiastically. "Feeling better?"

"Give him a minute," Aradia advises. "That infection did its best to fry his brain, and everyone's a little disoriented to start with."

"I'm good," you say. "Infection?"

"You got a cut on one of your stumps where you couldn't feel it and didn't know to treat it," Vriska says. 

You... guess that explains why she's here? You sit up, look at the body the medicullers are hauling away for disposal, and hastily look away. "How's Terezi?"

Aradia shrugs. "Sad. Karkat's ghost stalking her."

"I'm about to go join him," Vriska says, "but I need to apologize for finally killing you. I cannot BELIEVE I've now killed you how many sweeps later? Just, wow." She disappears without waiting for a response. Okay then. 

You stretch. Your head feels so light. Your legs feel so light. You feel like you could just float away.

"...How long does it take to learn to ghost hover?"

~~~~

(==> BE FUTURE KARKAT)

(You hit a lull in the Ghost Inner Circle's expansion, since Sollux checked out early. There are near misses with Terezi, plenty of them, since she no longer has to worry about endangering Tavros, but you eventually manage collectively to convince her that she should try to do for new conscripts what Sharpeye did for her, and having a few protégés settles her down.)

(You master looking like you died at full growth, not as a young adult. You still revert under stress, but at least you don't spend much time looking like a pupa on stilts, VRISKA.)

==> BE FUTURE NEPETA

You honestly think you're going to die when you get poisoned by a young indigo pissed off that an aging midblood occupies the dashing seadweller first officer's red quadrant. But none of your quadrants are ready to let you go just yet, and you get the best care possible, and soon enough you feel fine. (And the poisoner is in inquisitorment, being led to frame 'poisoning a greenblood' as 'plotting against a seadweller'.)

The medicullers don't tell you -- or your quadrants -- that it did damage to your blood pusher that probably won't ever heal completely. Tavros reads it off your chart over the mediculler's shoulder, and tells you later. He picked up a lot of mediculling knowledge while he was alive, and now it's even easier to snoop. 

"What does it mean?" you ask. "This will get me eventually?"

Tavros grimaces. "Unless something else does, I guess. But it could be sweeps, especially if you slow down a little..."

You nod understanding, not agreement. "Don't tell Equius or Eridan, please."

It IS sweeps. It might be longer if you took it easy, but -- no. And it's not like the endurance terrain runs you keep doing kill you RIGHT AWAY. They're just fine until the one that isn't. You just power along the track, pass a few young ceruleans who could really be in better shape, and then suddenly you feel dizzy, and go to your knees, and everything fades out.

Well, shit. That's... annoying. 

You fade back in looking at Aradia, with Tavros just behind her, looking anxious. "See, I told you," Aradia says. "She's fine. She just didn't turn up right away since -- I'm assuming -- she wasn't very upset about it."

"A little annoyed, maybe," you say, looking around. Still on the track. Your body is still lying where it fell. You really did just drop dead. "Pawsibly a little embarrassed."

"No, it's kind of nice we've at least got one person with a natural death."

"Except this was probably because of the poisoning, ultimately," Tavros puts in. 

"That was sweeps ago, it doesn't count."

You go see Equius and Eridan, to say -- not goodbye, but hello from the other side. Eridan will be okay. He's moved on before. Equius... is harder. 

"I'm not telling you to find someone new," you say. "I'm not saying goodbye. But I'm not going to let you turn into Corpsepap, either."

"It -- is not the same. We all--"

You're all more heavily involved with the dead than is normal. Or -- from this side -- with the living. "That's true. But it's not going to be the same, and we need to -- we need to come to terms with that. Both of us. EACH of us."

He agrees, but he still doesn't take it WELL that you'll be gone for a while. That you want to be gone for a while. So you break down and tell him. 

"I'm going to go back to Alternia and run around in the mountains the whole time. I am *so tired of spaceships*."

He doesn't try to argue with that. 

~~~~

(==> BE FUTURE VRISKA)

(Rainbow drinkers live longer, so Terezi is next, and unfortunately she KNOWS it. She's PLANNING it practically.)

("I am not," she says when you call her on it. "I just... don't see myself going from heart failure. Nepeta wasn't very happy with the outcome, you know? And I don't want to end up there too.")

("How is that not planning?")

(Karkat is making a point of Not Being Pushy for some weird Karkat reason, and everyone else is not sufficiently anti-death, so YOU AND TAVROS have to form the Make Terezi Live To Retirement Team. It's sort of awkward, even after all this time, but you're both motivated to stay on task and get stuff done. Together you head off or mitigate all sorts of risk-taking behavior!)

("I can't BELIEVE that YOU TWO are in CAHOOTS," Terezi complains.)

("Shut up and put your gorget on.")

~~~~

==> BE FUTURE EQUIUS 

You do not die in a predictable mishap involving Gathay, a robot, and a disintegration ray, despite several close calls. (You aren't sure Gathay's robots have ever killed anyone, actually. You've never heard of any cases, however unlikely it seems that she could avoid it.)

You don't die when your moirail dies, even though you sort of want to for a while. She wants you to keep going. You can be strong a while longer. 

You don't die when a senior archeradicator brings in his subdued, two-sweeps-past-Conscription teal "matesprit" for robotic feet and doesn't even pretend he wasn't what happened to the originals. "Now that she's learned about RUNNING," he smirks, and you VERY BADLY want to be VIOLENTLY insubordinate. Instead you alert the terrifying ghost army. After some discussion they finesse a transfer to First Officer Deepfall's ship. Eridan has the... FUCKER detained for conduct unbecoming an officer and orders him questioned. Inquisitormentor Burnteye maneuvers him into expressing resentment of Deepfall, and then suddenly he's the insubordinate one. He gets demoted and sent packing out of the squadron; his EX-matesprit gets sent to admin training. It's immensely satisfying. 

No, you die in an ALIEN PLAGUE. 

Initially a reconnaissance ship is blamed, but it turns out to have come in on a courier vessel from another squadron. The plague tears through the lowbloods -- it incubates asymptomatically for a week or more, and then in the space of a night the victim is drowning on the fluid in their lungs. The death rate is almost thirty percent WITH TREATMENT. Without treatment, it's over fifty. One ship loses its helmsman. 

It doesn't show up above teal, though. No one knows why, but highbloods breathe a sigh of relief and try to go about their business, watching the plague with dismay but also making fun on the Ruthless Regulation's stringent universal isolation procedures. 

It turns out highbloods have a LONGER asymptomatic incubation period, after which their lungs more or less LIQUEFY. The death rate is sixty percent with treatment, and treatment has to start immediately. Without treatment, it comes close to ninety. (For landdwellers, that is. Seadwellers can ride it out by going underwater and staying there until there's an opportunity to reconstruct their lungs.)

You know the odds aren't good, so you aren't surprised to wake up to Vriska and Feferi floating over your desk and sitting on your ceiling, respectively, both looking as clear and solid as Aradia when she puts effort into it. You glance back at your body. "Well."

"Welcome to the Terrifying Ghost Army!" Feferi says. "Sadly at the moment we're a little overwhelmed by terrified ghost plague victims, it's completely out of hand. But it'll take you a while to get control enough to be helpful, so I could take you back to Alternia for now. Meet up with Nepeta."

And you feel guilty about it, but-- "Yes, I would like that, if you can spare the time." You pause. "Terezi? And Eridan?"

"The legislacerator isolation procedures were effective, seems like, so Terezi's fine. Eridan doesn't know if he's infected, but he's moved underwater in case he is, and he is NOT happy about it." Vriska barely snickers at her own words, though, so you know they're taking the situation seriously.

~~~~~

==> BE FUTURE TEREZI

Everything's a mess after the alien plague is finally eliminated, and personnel get sent every which where in an attempt to fill some of the emptied critical positions. The squadron gets put back on Conscription duty ahead of when rotation would call for it, but throwing in COMPLETELY UNTRAINED highbloods is not, unsurprisingly, terribly helpful.

It would make a lot more sense to break up all the plague-afflicted squadrons (how many squadrons is classified information, but the ghost army confirmed it was EIGHT) and consolidate them into fewer squadrons, but this is more useful to you, so. 

Over your protests, you get put in charge of crew assignments on the Gathering Swarm. You resolve to come down like a meteor on any murder-recon-like situation, keep a close eye out for any illegal trade, and manipulate the assigned teams to encourage highbloods to play nicely with others. 

You keep it up for a good few sweeps, too, and you need your swordcane to LEAN on by the time a brownblood grieving a culled matesprit decides an elderly teal administrator is the most PRACTICAL revenge target available. 

"I thought you were smarter than this, Serfin," you inform him. "No, you -- I don't know why you're even BOTHERING to hide the body, I'm going to be missed regardless, but if for some reason you MUST don't hide it THERE. Do you ever even talk to maintenance people?"

Tavros shows up while your body is still only halfway in the air duct. "Aradia said-- What happened?"

You throw an arm around his shoulders. (It feels a little strange, you hadn't quite hit full growth before he died.) "Generalized rage happened, I think."

"...The air duct, really?"

"Not exactly a criminal mastermind, is he."

"...Looks like he broke the screws on the grate, too, he's never going to get that back on."

~~~~~

(==> BE FUTURE GAMZEE)

(After the plague, you really start networking with other squadrons. You're one of the people on the... goodwill tour? Well, anyway, you go around between squadrons, talking to other ghosts and necropaths and occasionally other people if it's called for, and distributing ghost music players and palmhusks which hardly ever bite anymore.)

(You always find time to stop by whatever subjugglator ships there are and talk to the ghosts, in case they need help. You never PLAN to do anything more than that, but somehow you always end up delivering at least one ghost smackdown to a living subjugglator.)

(When you get back Karkat tells you you've become an urban legend: a phantom who protects people menaced by highbloods and curbs the power of the subjugglator cult. People haven't really settled on a name, but since you hardly ever try to look like a full adult, a lot of them say The Small Highblood.)

(You think that's pretty cool, but decide to bring your guitar to future interventions so you're associated with music, too.)

~~~~~

==> BE FUTURE KANAYA 

As a rainbow drinker converted young, you may live a very, very, very long time. 

At one point you almost decide to die out of sheer BOREDOM. You love the caverns, you do, you LOVE the Mother Grub you hatched yourself, your friends never neglect you, but still, after so long... Then you realize you have a certain amount of authority at this point and assign yourself to go survey the virgin mother grub population. Much better. With some variety, you can stick it out much longer. 

As an Attender (you turned down Altadona when they offered it) you're not in a position to directly change culling policy, but you can make suggestions, so you always make sure to have current contacts in grub handling. So you hear things pretty quickly. 

And... not yet. There's use in living a while longer yet.

~~~~~

==> BE FUTURE ERIDAN

Nepeta shows up while you are supervising the re-enameling of your new command block. "Aradia said they'd given you a purroper ship this time," she says, looking around. 

You do not roll your eyes at her where anyone can see, but do head to your personal blockset as soon as you can get away with it. "Good to see you -- is something going on?"

She nods. "I just came from Alternia--"

"Is it Kan?" you ask, feeling your vascular system seize for a moment. It doesn't really make any difference, but you don't want to be the only one alive. 

"No, no, she's fine. No, it's -- an heiress made it through the Trials."

Your blockset should be clear of surveillance, but you still don't say anything beyond "Oh."

A lot of hypotheticals may be about to become actuals. 

"I'm mostly sure I didn't say anything about being bored that could've tempted fate," you say, more to the ceiling than to Nepeta. She laughs anyway. 

~~~~~

(==> BE FUTURE FEFERI)

(You wave to your lusus, who seems a little nonplussed by your presence but not hostile, and ghost-swim down to the hive rising from the sea floor. Karkat follows, basically ghost flying.)

(The Heiress is two sweeps old and is playing with a box of colored sand, swirling her fingers through to make patterns. You crouch down beside her, double check that you look the age you really died at, and go visible. "Hi there.")

(She looks at you with big eyes. "Hello?")

("Your name is Pelagi, right?")

(She nods.)

("I'm Feferi! And this is Karkat, and I hope we can be your friends.")

(You've got a lot to tell her.)


End file.
